Frank Leslie Stillwell 1888-1963

Frank Leslie Stillwell
was born on 27 June 1888, in the family home at Hawthorn, an outer
suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. He was the seventh of eight children
to Alfred and Mary Eliza Stillwell (née Townsend) and was
the youngest son.

His father was a printer and his grandfather, John Stillwell,
who arrived in Australia from London in 1855, had also been a
printer. Both parents of the grandfather were of Huguenot stock
and were silk weavers in London. In his youth, Frank Stillwell,
as were all his brothers and sisters, was encouraged to work hard
at school, and he was given every chance by his parents. It is
remembered that as a boy he was well-liked but was delicate and
suffered several illnesses, out of which he grew to enjoy college
life in later years. His ailments were chiefly to do with his
lungs, and his 17 months as a young man in Antarctica finally
cleared them up.

He attended the Auburn State School from 1893 to 1900, and later
Hawthorn College to which he won a scholarship. It was from Hawthorn
College (a school which no longer exists) that he won an exhibition
of £40 and went to study at Melbourne University in 1907.
He elected to study Science but included Mining Engineering in
his course also. He held a resident scholarship at Ormond College,
one of the affiliated colleges of the University of Melbourne.

When Stillwell started his University studies, John Walter Gregory
had only recently resigned from the Chair of Geology and the position
of Director of the Geological Survey of Victoria which he also
held, being, according to a long letter he wrote to the Argus
newspaper, unable to continue in the face of lack of facilities
for the development of mining geology, and Ernest Willington Skeats,
a double first-class honours man in Geology and Chemistry from
the Royal College of Science, London, had just assumed the Chair
vacated by Gregory in 1905. Skeats and Stillwell were, in fact,
to be closely associated thereafter, and both played a major part
in the developments of mining geology during a period in which
the mining industry, while facing many problems, made great advances
in Australia.

In his university years, Stillwell gained several prizes, holding
the Caroline Kay Scholarship, a Government Research Scholarship,
and the Kernot Research Scholarship. After graduating B.Sc. with
first-class honours at the Final Examination in 1911, he worked
for his Master's degree on the geology of a local region (Broadmeadows)
in which he showed a growing interest in the microscopical and
chemical aspects of rocks and minerals. A few years later, and
in fact after the minimum time had elapsed for the attainment
of this high honour, he obtained the degree of Doctor of Science
with a thesis on "The Metamorphic Rocks of Adelie Land",
and in 1919 he won the coveted David Syme Prize for scientific
research in Australia-wide competition.

During these early years Stillwell was most active. Not only had
he studied the geology of Broadmeadows and the monchiquite dykes
of Bendigo, then an active and important goldfield, but after
graduation he joined the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)
as geologist, and spent 17 months in Antarctica under the leadership
of Douglas Mawson. He
was stationed at the Main Base at Commonwealth Bay, Adelie Land,
and during the summer season of 1912-1913 was leader of a three-man
team which surveyed 50 miles of the coast line east of Commonwealth
Bay. It was on this assignment that he collected and studied in
the field the metamorphic rocks which were described and discussed
in his report, published in 1918, in which he propounded the concept
of metamorphic differentiation in order to explain contrasted
mineral assemblages which were formed during metamorphism from
an initially uniform parent rock. Although his work had already
been recognised in Science Progress of April 1919, as notable
and worthy of rank with contemporary Scandinavian investigations,
it was to be 30 years after its publication that his concept was
re-discovered and G. H. Francis, of Cambridge, wrote to Stillwell
pointing out that he had made great use of his work in connection
with his own researches into the Lewisian metamorphic rocks of
Inverness-shire. Stillwell always retained strong personal links
with his Antarctic colleagues, and there is little doubt that
his period in Antarctica had a great influence on him. Not only
did his health clear up but he also made friendships which lasted
him all his life, and his abiding interest in "The Home of
The Blizzard", that land of snow and ice where his name is
preserved in Stillwell Island near Cape Denison, must have served
partly to fill some of the emotional gaps in his life. Stillwell
never married. He was indeed a retiring and even shy man, especially
as a young man. Despite the clarity of his thought and writing,
it was not until the later years of his life that he expressed
himself at all freely in public and, indeed, he was almost tongue-tied
in the presence of a large audience. Nevertheless he had a warmth
behind a very conservative and rather retiring exterior, which
those who were fortunate enough to work at all closely with him
soon discovered, and his friendships and family ties always remained
strong.

On returning from Antarctica early in 1914, he went to Adelaide
as Acting Lecturer in Mineralogy during 1914 and 1915. After enlistment
in 1916 with the Australian Military Forces he was withdrawn from
the Army to assist in the newly-developed Commonwealth Advisory
Council of Science and Industry, which was later to develop into
the present Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Stillwell worked with the Advisory Council until 1919, conducting
detailed studies on the occurrence of gold in the Bendigo mines
on behalf of the Gold Research Committee which had been set up
under the Council. His papers on the Bendigo gold occurrences
cover detailed studies in the mines and in the laboratory, which
demonstrated the association of gold with particular geological
structures and with certain minerals, and his theories concerning
these. He was particularly influenced by Taber's notions as to
growth pressures developing during crystallisation in porous rocks
in the absence of pre-existing fissures, and was also led to believe
that gold was concentrated and precipitated by carbonaceous material
in black slates. From 1919 to 1921 he worked at Broken Hill, New
South Wales, as assistant geologist under the direction of Dr. E. C. Andrews,
of the Mines Department of that State. Dr. W. R. Browne,
doyen of Australian geologists today, and Frank Stillwell both
made petrographic studies of the country rocks surrounding the
Broken Hill ore bodies, but the two young geologists did not agree
as to the origin of those rocks, and a controversy developed therefrom.
Many years later, in 1954, both men were simultaneously elected
to fellowship of the newly-established Australian Academy of Science,
and renewed acquaintance in the Academy for the first time in
many years.

On completing his work at Broken Hill, Stillwell returned to Victoria
as staff geologist to the Bendigo Amalgamated Goldfield Company,
but during 1922 and 1923 he visited mining fields in Europe, South
Africa and the United States of America.

This overseas tour, which was made at his own expense, brought
to his notice the developing subject of Mineragraphy, that is
the study of opaque minerals and particularly the ore minerals
in polished section under the reflecting microscope On his return
to Australia and his assumption of the first Research Fellowship
of the University of Melbourne, he began his mineragraphic studies
of Australian ores, working on the Broken Hill deposits. This
work immediately revealed the economic as well as the scientific
potentialities of the study of polished ores, for, in particular,
he was able to locate, in the form of minute dispersed particles,
a good deal of the silver content in the galena in the Broken
Hill lode, which he demonstrated was present in the form of the
mineral dyscrasite. This discovery immediately aroused interest
among scientists and mining men and led to his appointment as
Research Petrologist in 1927 to the newly formed Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research.

Extending his sphere of interest, he visited the West Australian
gold fields and re-mapped the Kalgoorlie field in 1927 and 1928.
Here he joined geological and mineralogical work in the careful
examination of the rock types in order to discover the relationship
between their emplacement or alteration, and the emplacement of
the gold-bearing ores. This brought together an array of data
which hitherto had been treated separately and drew attention
to the possibility of the extension of the Kalgoorlie field into
areas where similar geological conditions could be demonstrated
to exist. It was largely as an outcome of Stillwell's findings
that further exploration and development was stimulated, and the
Kalgoorlie field was revived and extended.

On his return to Melbourne Stillwell continued work on the Kalgoorlie
telluride ore minerals, publishing an important paper on them
in 1931. From 1929 until his retirement at the age of 65 in June
1953, he was in charge of the Mineragraphic Section of C.S.I.R.
(later C.S.I.R.O.) which section is housed in the University of
Melbourne adjoining the Department of Geology. For many years
he took the courses in mining geology for the advanced students
for Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Mining Engineering, and
also gave instruction in mineragraphy in the laboratory, where
many of the Melbourne graduates who are now working throughout
Australia first met him. He was a patient teacher if somewhat
pedantic, and, in order to appreciate him, it was necessary to
recognise his reliance on logic, clear thinking and skill in the
application of techniques. He never gave up an idea without a
fight, and perhaps his conservativeness at times caused him to
cling to an outmoded idea. But indeed the range of his work and
its importance had been such that he was in the field of ore mineralogy
and mineragraphy the undoubted leader in this country and a major
figure in the world. Under his direction, ores, mattes, slags,
spiesses and mill products from all over Australia were investigated,
with results of great economic importance particularly in regard
to tracing the causes of losses in mineral recovery of gold, copper,
lead, zinc, tin and other ores and thus in checking the efficiency
of mineral separation methods used by the mines. Nearly every
major ore deposit and many smaller occurrences in Australia were
investigated by Stillwell and his associates in the Mineragraphic
Section, where he was joined in 1935 by the late A. B. Edwards,
who was his most distinguished student and colleague. Edwards'
untimely death in 1960 was a great blow to Stillwell, but he was
fortunate in that others were there to carry on in his laboratories,
where he was afforded facilities to continue his own work until
his death.

During his retirement he was appointed consultant to the Broken
Hill Geological Committee, and continued his work with Broken
Hill rocks and minerals. His last paper on these was published
in 1959, 37 years after his early work on the Broken Hill district.

In all Stillwell published 68 scientific papers, dealing in later
years chiefly with mineragraphy.

Stillwell was a member of the Royal Society of Victoria from 1910
until his death, and of the Australasian Institute of Mining and
Metallurgy from 1921. In both these bodies he played an important
role. He was a member of the Committee of the Victorian Branch
of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy for several
years and at one time its Chairman. In the Royal Society of Victoria
he was Councillor from 1929 to 1963, Honorary Secretary from 1929
to 1947, Vice-President (1949-52), President (1953 and 1954) and
Honorary Editor of the Society's Journal from 1956 to 1963.

Many honours came his way and he deeply appreciated them. In 1948
the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy awarded him
the Institute Medal. He was awarded the Clarke Memorial Medal
by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1951, and was appointed
Correspondent of the Geological Society of America in 1952, and
Honorary Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
in 1953. In 1954 he was created an officer of the Order of the
British Empire in recognition of his services to Australia and
to the Geological Sciences, and it was in this year that he was
elected to fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science. To
honour his seventieth birthday, the Stillwell Anniversary Volume
was published in 1958 by the Australasian Institute of Mining
and Metallurgy.

As a University man, Stillwell was a life member of the Melbourne
University Graduate Union, and the Graduate Union received its
first legacy from him, a sum of £2,000. [He left munificent
legacies also to the Royal Society of Victoria (£4,000),
the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (£2,000),
the Geological Society of Australia (£1,000) and to the Australian
Academy of Science (£1,000).] He had been a keen college
cricketer, being indeed an accomplished batsman and a man with
an abiding interest in sport. He took up tennis in middle life
and played regularly with colleagues for several years, but eventually
it was bowls which became his major outdoor interest. He was,
too, always a keen chess player. All this despite the fact that
in his youth he had had lung trouble, and in later years he faced
with great fortitude recurring deterioration of the sinews of
his hands causing partial loss of the use of his fingers and necessitating
periodical operations. He pursued a life which in his youth was
extremely strenuous and called for the highest degree of physical
courage; in later years he pursued his scientific researches and
his many other activities with equal fortitude and tenacity. He
was a man of few spoken words, but of great loyalty and devotion
not only to Science, but also to his colleagues and to his family
and friends.

As mentioned above, the death of his younger colleague, A. B.
Edwards, was a great loss to him. Edwards had acknowledged Stillwell's
role as "tutor, guide, instructor and colleague" in
the foreword to his book of the "Textures of the Ore Minerals",
and Stillwell's tribute to Edwards in the American Mineralogist
(vol. 46, 1961, pp. 488-96) expresses his own deep feelings
about his friend and associate.

Stillwell and his scientific colleagues were men of a period,
seeing in Australia the growth and development of the application
of Science to industry, and having inborn the abilities and desires
which, with opportunity and support, lead on to great achievement.
He explored the Earth under rigorous conditions at the surface,
in the depths of the mines, and in the laboratory. He was an initiator,
along with many others who in their own disciplines were likewise
initiators and from whom the present growth of Science in Australia
derives an enormous amount. One can, in looking back, identify
these people and fortunately many of them are still with us; but
to Stillwell it would have been a challenge to continue this work,
and this challenge is one that must now be faced with all the
energy, the honesty and the élan with which the
men of Stillwell's generation faced their problems.

One of his younger colleagues who formerly knew him in the Geology
Department, University of Melbourne, and later worked with him
in the Mineragraphic Section of C.S.I.R.O., Dr. George Baker,
has not only assiduously collected together his materials and
papers but has also very kindly provided much of the factual information
on which the writer's account of Stillwell is based.

As one who knew Stillwell as a student and was taught by him,
as one who worked with him as his first Demonstrator in practical
classes in mineragraphy in the University of Melbourne, and who
was closely associated with him in the Royal Society of Victoria,
I believe that the appreciation which has been expressed of Stillwell
is in every sense true and just.

Stillwell was a great man of Science. A little hampered as well
as endowed by nature, moulded by the influences of his time, and
at times frustratingly conservative and rigid to younger associates,
he was a true pioneer, an explorer of Nature and an intellectual
master whose influence has spread like ripples from a stone in
a pond, affecting geology and geologists, mineralogy and mineralogists,
mining and mining men, not only in Australia but throughout the
world.

This biography owes much to Stillwell's surviving younger sister,
Miss Olive Stillwell, who very kindly provided not only biographical
material but also her thoughts about her brother and his career.
It is from Miss Olive Stillwell that we know what many of us had
sensed - that he was deeply appreciative of the course of events
in his life and work and particularly of the respect and support
which permitted him to continue in harness until the day of his
death. He died in Melbourne after a short illness on 8 February
1963, in his 75th year.

This memoir was originally published in Records of the Australian
Academy of Science, vol. 1, no. 1, 1966.